Hecate
—Anonymous Painting
HECATE, LAUGHING
—Loch Henson, Diamond Springs, CA
“Welcome to The Crossroads, child,
I have been waiting.
What will it be?”
I stared at her long flowing hair,
and nimble fingers as she sifted through
strands of something I wasn’t sure I wanted
to see clearly.
“Well, dearie, what’ll it be?”
On the side table next to her sat a
small mirror, a book, and a key. The
cauldron before her rumbled and burbled.
At first blush, the mirror was tempting.
What to see, though? I was tired of seeing
myself in the daily reflections of others…
surely the mirror was not the answer.
The book? Again, difficult to imagine.
Would I be expected to read it?
Would I be expected to write it?
And the key…was that for locking
something up or letting something out?
I began to feel uneasy.
The steam from the witches brew
curled her hair into ringlets. She waited.
After a moment, feeling the coin in my
pocket, and still unsure, I watched as her
eyes met mine.
She plucked the mirror from the table, and
with one swift motion, it was into the brew.
I could hear the screams of a thousand tiny voices.
None of them mine.
Her eyebrow arched.
“Which shall it be, child? We haven’t
all the time in the world just now, you know.”
The thought of the book dissolving was
unsettling, and the thought of the key in
my custody was equally uncomfortable.
She shrugged, and with a wet plop, the
book was in the brew. On its way in, I could
see the pages were stained, and no words were
unwritten.
With hardly a pause, the key was in her hand.
Ringed in garnets, glowing
over the fire, it was a lovely, frightening thing.
I looked closely; it had a face, with tiny glistening teeth.
She offered it to me. I sat, as though frozen,
heart racing and hands still.
Dangling from her bracelet was a locket,
with a bleeding, open key hole.
“So it comes to this?” she asked. “I thought
it might.”
The key dropped into the brew, and the
locket’s wound was cauterized.
The steam from the cauldron clouded my eyes,
and the hair from my head was stretched
and pulled into long, dark strands. My nails
grew longer, and she grasped my neck
lightly in her teeth before leaving.
I never heard such
music as when she laughed.
In my cauldron, a mirror, a book, and a key.
In my pocket, my coin.
At The Crossroads, I stand.
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Loch Henson for today’s tale!
____________________
—Medusa, with thanks to Loch Henson for today’s tale!
